blinkinglights

So in this dream, for some reason, I was a shinigami. I know it had some kind of lead-in, but the first thing I can remember is standing on a street corner out in the open, having just come out from an enclosed space like an alley in an open-air shopping center. They're big wide streets, like in California. I'm standing with a war group of shinigami. I think I'm in plainclothes, and so are some of the others, but not, like, Ikkaku. We've been talking, and as we stand there waiting for everyone to catch up (I think we just came from some sort of hideout or temporary meeting place) we're having a short conversation. I have no idea what we're talking about now but I remark to Renji like I'm making a point that his hakama aren't red, and then he stares at me blankly and makes fun of my pronunciation. Then everybody quiets down and we get ready to move forward.

I'm wearing a sword at my side. It's....at my right side, which is the wrong side, in retrospect, since I am right-handed. It's high on my right side at my natural waist, like they carry them when they're in uniform. It's tilting too far forward like to slide out, so Renji reaches out with a frown and fixes it for me. Nobody seems perturbed that I suck or am new. My sword keeps wanting to slide out; I fiddle with it. It moves in the scabbard silently with a heavy, well-oiled motion. I have a vague gun-range worry that I shouldn't be playing with it or letting it slip out even an inch like it keeps doing, but I notice everybody else keeps doing it too, and decide letting it show a little must help focus everybody's evil-sensing abilities. I do it again on purpose and this great ear-ringing silence falls for a moment, like a massive explosion or heartbeat or the space in between Inception Noises. We're all running now, stringing out. What I've just sensed worries me, especially as a moment afterward I feel it again without the aid of my sword as if I am now attuned (it's very unsettling).

I drop back briefly to try to remember Ikkaku's name so I can nervously remark something to him about what I've noticed, and he answers me shortly but not impolitely. Scratch that, without heat, since he's always impolite. After I get confirmation that what I sense is real, I start getting, you know, super worried, so I try really hard to move to the front to catch up with Rukia, since she's a total badass and I feel like I'd be the safest in her vicinity. I can still see the back of her round head and her narrow shoulders really clearly as I ran after her.

The attack hits us from the side, the right flank. This part is hazy and I've forgotten it now, because I woke up with this dream in like the middle of the night, but was too tired to get up and write it down. Essentially, we lose one by one to this huge rotund eggplant-suited Hollow thing. In retrospect it was dressed kind of like a clown but that wasn't, like, the point of the thing, I mean that was just it's character design, and in aspect it wasn't actually particularly frightening. It was just canny, and in the end stronger than us. I think it immobilized me early on, and then the others, and then it came around taking our left eyes out and casting a really dread spell on us to make us its nasty minions. There was something about seeds here, like maybe it planted a seed where the eye used to be, but I just remember hearing everyone cursing and screaming at it (lol maybe I was next to Ikkaku?) and then it was my turn. Since I was myself in this dream and super out of my depth, my character was basically an enormous coward, and only a little tricky, but as I looked at this horrible creature and its horrible hand descending to take out my eye, I guess I remembered that the key to breaking spells is, like, always love, so I was all, very seriously, like, crying and knowing I was gonna die and shit, "I love you" trying to fill up with the feeling of "love" so that maybe bits of me would survive whatever was going to happen. And then LOL it took out my eye, with its FINGERS, which was freaky but hurt in a different, deeper way than you'd expect.

And then later, as it was gathering us all up and we were vacant-eyed and brainwashed, it told me in its high cruel satisfied voice that what had been in my heart wasn't love, but hope--not on the same level as love, I guess--and I mulled this over for a while. Apparently I was useful in a kind of scullerymaid capacity since at this point we were in his leafy secret base in a big kind of dark refectory looking area, and me and a bunch of clones he'd made of me were all bustling around getting things done while he brooded over everybody big and useful he'd captured. He'd also captured Ichigo, which was probably why, after a bit of me wandering around this area and being part of the busy vapid camaraderie of me and all my clones tending to the others, that Rukia eventually came in to stage a big rescue of all of us I think. It was trailing off at that point, or I'd woken up a little and gone back to sleep, because I've lost most of this part, but my character, being somewhat weak and craven, definitely followed where the wind blew, and was fixing to stay with the Hollow since, as he planned to rule the shadows of...not sure what plane we were on anymore, he was going to have to destroy Aizen, too, (remember when he was an awesome bad guy and had all those dastardly plots instead of just being "THE STRONGEST, no wait ichigo is the strongest LOL"?) and considering how easily he'd wiped out all my shinigami bros I and all my clones were kind of running around hiding as the rescue went down and the other shinigami were snapped out of it one by one trying to work out how we'd stay with the Hollow. I'd like to think that this was because of being the Hollow's thrall or whatever, since, seriously, me. Not a cool life decision.

tl;dr it was really awesome walking around like a badass with a sword and a bunch of bros in the beginning. All this recall is really helping the clarity of my dreams, I could definitely feel the smoothness of the scabbard and the weight behind the hilt and everything, it ruled. Also that wasn't anything how I thought magical-sensing powers would feel, which made it even better, it was like hearing in another color you've never seen before.